Zombie Lake is an early 80's French film about a group of zombified nazi soldiers returning from their watery grave to seek vengeance. This review will contain spoilers as I find it difficult to review this film without touching on the full breadth of its absurdity.
The film begins with a beautiful young woman stripping bare and going foolishly going swimming in a grimy looking lake which clearly has a warning sign, which she removes, that warns against doing so. Of course there's a zombie in there who attacks and kills her. If they know there's zombies in there, would they not put up more than a sign?
When the woman is noticed missing, they decide to wait a day and see if she turns up before contacting the mayor. The mayor!?! Have they never heard of the police? Then when she does not turn up and her clothes are found abandoned on the beach, the mayor decides to give it another day to see if she arrives before contacting the police. This case is being investigated about as thoroughly as the Pickton Farm! When they finally do call in a couple of investigators they are bumbling fools who are slaughtered about two scenes later. Meanwhile, many more naked or scantily clad women are killed.
The zombies themselves are of the green face-paint variety with a spattering of latex wounds thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately the make up is not only highly cheesy, but also poorly done. On numerous occasions you can clearly see where the make up ends and clean skin begins. On other occasions you can plainly see that the make up is washing off in the water. They get a couple of cooler looking zombies towards the end, but over all it is pretty bad.
Worse yet, when they kill their victims (who always seem to be women), they always do so by biting them on the neck... often is prolonged, unnecessarily drawn out scenes. The film alternately calls the villains "ghosts" and "zombies"... but never vampires... which their method of attack seems to suggest.
Then we get to the part where the main zombie character, a nazi soldier, is humanized thoroughly. He falls in love with a French woman and they make love in an extremely drawn out soft core scene. It later turns out he impregnated her. She dies, but the baby lives. As the nazi's flee the advancing allies, they have five minutes to stop by the house so he can say bye to them... you'd think they would be in a bigger hurry.
Anyhow, as they flee they are ambushed by the French resistance, who has the decency to rid the planet of every single one of them. Then the resistance decides they have to hide the evidence... but they are in a hurry... so to save time, they just throw the bodies in the lake. Thus is explained how they got down there and somehow subsequently became zombies.
What's worse, the nazi is then humanized yet again when he returns to life and visits the home of his deceased lover, then protects his daughter from the others. Apparently there are good nazi's and bad nazi's... who knew. Apparently there are also good zombies and bad zombies... who knew again! The film would have benefited from skipping the entirely asinine idea of a zombie love story. Plus the undead lover boy in question was the doucheyest looking zombie of the lot, which didn't help matters. I found this humanization, this sympathetic tone towards the lead zombie to be a bit unsettling and rather odd coming from a film made in France, a country which suffered horribly under nazi occupation.
On top of all this, the film is horribly edited. The scenes cut abruptly and don't flow well at all. The dubbing is bad, and the acting is bad enough that it is noticeable even in a different language. The film chugs along slowly, but eventually the villagers unite to destroy their greenish foes. It is in no way a good movie, but yet is somehow watch-able, if only once. One word of advice, however; do not watch this film alone. It would be much more fun in a group as a drinking game.
1 pair of soggy jack boots out of 5
Rated R: contains extensive full nudity, violence.
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